The Dark Side of White Lies in the Workplace: Feedback to women is upwardly distorted.

The present research tested whether people are upwardly dishonest during performance feedback to females. In Study 1, participants were asked to guess the gender of an employee based on the degree of honesty of a manager’s feedback about the employee’s substandard performance. People were more likely to assume that the employee who had been told a ‘white lie’ was female, suggesting that the notion that women are given less accurate feedback is prevalent. In Study 2, participants were asked to quantitatively evaluate essays and then give the male and female writers direct quantitative and qualitative feedback. Participants were more likely to upwardly adjust their quantitative evaluations and give more positive qualitative feedback directly to female writers but not to males, providing evidence for the existence of an honesty gap toward women. Study 3 explored whether females prefer white lies about their performance however, females did not express a preference for nicer but less accurate feedback compared to males, suggesting an asymmetry between evaluators’ dishonesty bias and recipients’ preference for honesty. Possible mechanisms underlying this bias and implications for gender equality in the workplace are discussed.